New York’s bikeshare takes another hit, this time from Sandy

The bikeshare in D.C., which for some reason New York is having trouble duplicating.

In some parallel universe, New Yorkers took advantage of the city’s massive, distributed (at least in Manhattan) bike-sharing network to get around in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Maybe Citi even waived fees for the vehicles, eager to get a little bump of goodwill at a moment of extreme need. But, as longtime viewers may remember, despite plans to unveil the 10,000-bike system this year, it got pushed to March of 2013 due to technical glitches.

Or, at least March was the target date in August. It’s not clear if that is still the new date, because the system got damaged again. By Sandy.

The storm dumped several feet of water at some points across the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where the city had been storing equipment like bicycles and docking stations in Building 293, near the northern tip of the yard and the waters of Wallabout Bay.

Building 293 was among those that flooded, and a spokesman for the mayor’s office said Tuesday that there appeared to be damage to program equipment, including docking stations for bicycles, as a result. …

Officials said it was premature to estimate whether the flooding could affect the program’s start date, scheduled for next March.

Oh, it’s premature, is it? Well, maybe in your book, “officials,” but we’ve been watching this thing for long enough to make a prediction: This will affect the program’s start date. We can say that because every single other thing that has been mentioned about the bike share program has resulted in a delay. Literally every other thing. We strongly advise the Times and the city to stop talking about the program, now, immediately, to ensure this thing happens before 2025.

Even with that drastic action, the question is: Will the bikeshare program be in place before someone invents a bike that can fly, like some sort of space bike? And the answer is no, because that basically already exists.